Gaming the System

Bridgepoint Education, the controversial private schools outfit that’s been up and down on Wall Street, was busy handing out freebies to local politicos last year, annual disclosures show. Chief among the beneficiaries was recently reelected San Diego county supervisor Greg Cox, who got a December Holiday Bowl tailgate party admission worth $100, Holiday Bowl tickets worth $200, and a $98 ticket to a September Chargers game. Bridgepoint gave GOP state senator Joel Anderson $404 worth of “Event Tickets, Food & Beverages” for two occasions in September and December. And the corporation gave Democratic assemblyman Marty Block football tickets worth $146 in September, along with a $200 ticket to the San Diego County Taxpayers Association banquet in May of last year. Other companies also provided entertainment. From Cox Communications, the cable TV giant, Supervisor Cox got $301 in two admissions to Padres opening day. Back on the football front, the San Diego County Credit Union kicked in for an $80 tailgate party at the Poinsettia Bowl, along with a $170 game admission for Cox. The California Dental Association gave a $124 concert ticket to Block.

Comments

Oh the horror, the horror! Private sector companies and associations gave a total of almost TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS in sports game tickets as gifts to favored politicians last year.

Now, note the gifts from the labor unions to their favored San Diego area politicians. No cheap-ass game tickets for them. Just tens -- sometimes HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars in "independent expenditures" to help get each candidate elected. Not to mention providing free "volunteer" labor.

Yes, fiscal conservative helped a dozen or so high profile local candidates with similar IE's and volunteer efforts. But the unions essentially elected SCORES of local area candidates -- likely over a hundred -- with their obscene spending.

A recent article estimated that the ANNUAL California statewide labor union political spending came to $750 million. Again, that's ANNUAL. And that's not counting the spending of countless local labor unions.

Did anybody read the recent head-in-the-sand-don't-trouble-me-with-negative-facts editorial about scandalous Bridgepoint in the UT San Diego? It was as if the UT's Bridgepoint defender were living on a different planet, so fulsome was the praise for what was described as San Diego's wonderful civic neighbor.

Simultaneously the LA Times ran a(nother) scathing story over the weekend, detailing how this for-profit education outfit scams veterans out of GI Bill dollars; offers, at best, useless certificates instead of transferrable credits; hustles marginally qualified students to finance Bridgepoint "educations" with federal loans that Bridgepoint gets to keep when a defaulting student goes into debt; has many more marketers than teachers; "graduates" few of its enrollees and at a much heftier price than public colleges.